This is part 1 of an ongoing community project to help people understand how to get jobs during a recession.

This data is slightly skewed towards those that are already active in social media as the survey went to those within my network on my blog and the highly connected Twitter community. There were 214 respondents to the survey although this graphic only represents those who got jobs since Sept 2008 (71 respondents) that represent those that were hired during the announcement of the recession. This is a personal research project, and is not tied to my employer, clients, or anyone else for that matter.

Finding 1: Most Recent Hires Got Jobs from Referrals from Friends, Colleagues, Alumni, or Family
This is just the data from the 71 respondents that got hired since Sept 2008 (since the recession started).

Most (43%) get their jobs through their immediate online network of friends, colleagues, alumni, or family.

Although a big gap the second (12%) most used method was through online job boards or websites.

Some suggested on Twitter that in Europe or Asia this is the primary method of job seeking –unlike the highly wired online job market in US, I did not ask location question to verify.

This could also be due to the fact that my network are people already using social media and are hyper-connected to each other.

I had no idea this method would have been so high, if it were, I would have asked separate questions to break that out into different referral methods.

Recommendations for Job Seekers in a Recession

First of all, considering the massive layoffs, almost everyone should be exploring a backup plan

Job seekers should nurture their relationships with their peers first.

Job seekers should continually keep their network educated about their new projects, skills, and work they are taking on, consider using LinkedIn, Facebook, professional website or a blog

Interact with them in email, social networks, phone and good ol fashioned lunch meetings

To find the other results from this survey, I’ll be tagging the post “Job Survey” and you can click that category to learn more. Thanks to my wife who helped cut, cleansed, and graphed the data it in 1/10th the time it would take me. (and during our vacation in Hawaii!)

Coming soon I’ll be posting results for: top industries hired, compensation rates, and duration spent looking for a job in a recession